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NACo Past President Miller retires after 24 years in office

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Charlie Ban

County News Digital Editor & Senior Writer

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Past NACo President Karen Miller stressed rural opportunity, technology in county government career 

Karen Miller’s strength and weakness, in her estimation of her career in government, was her directness. An inability to beat around the bush or play any games. That’s how she got into this situation in the first place.

As the owner of The Establishment restaurant and lounge in Columbia, Mo., she played host to a political fundraiser for a friend in January 1992. As the conversation turned to the challengers for an open Boone County Commission seat, she couldn’t hold her tongue:

“I can’t support them. I can do better than any of them.”

One of the assembled people had a quick answer.

“I just happen to have the paperwork out in the car. I’ll go get it,” he told her.

“It was a spur of the moment decision, I didn’t give it a thought,” Miller said. “I didn’t plan it, but that’s what happened. Here we are.”

We are at the end of a 24-year career on the County Commission, more than a year after Miller decided against running for a seventh term. That included nearly 23 years on the NACo Board of Directors and a term in 2003–2004 as NACo president.

A few days after leaving office, she organized files from those two dozen years in her home.

“This is going to take about six months,” she said.

First on her agenda in 1993 was a half-cent tax for the county’s road system. That was done within six months. Within the year she was an active member of the Missouri Association of Counties and in the next, she was a NACo Board member. Anything else would have been foolish for Miller, who was on the Board of the Missouri Restaurant Association.

“I had great value for association work,” she said. “You can get a whole lot more done in a group than you can on your own.”

She has had to get an awful lot done before. With an appointment to meet then-First Lady Hillary Clinton at nearby Stephens College less than a year into her time on the commission, she faced a day when her cook at The Establishment didn’t show up.

“I could either go cook, take care of customers and employees or schmooze with First Lady,” she said. “I cooked, but I went right to the business broker and sold the place.”

Her attention now focused solely on the county, she managed all manner of departments, but was most interested in information technology and construction, a field in which she worked before The Establishment.

“I knew enough about it to be dangerous,” she said.

Boone County recently opened up its new emergency dispatch center, a blending of those two disciplines that adds up to a $10 million building filled with $8 million of technology. A far cry from the county’s technological starting point when she was elected.

“We didn’t have email, we probably had two computers, and one fax machine for the entire county,” she said. “Personal property declarations were alphabetized.”

The NACo connections helped her learn a lot about how counties were using technology, and she says what she learned about Geographic Information Systems and its application across many different county functions paid for the county’s NACo membership for those 24 years.

While she was running for the County Commission, her late father, Donald Childress lost the Scotland County, Mo. assessor’s race by a single vote. Two years later, he won a seat on that county’s commission, and the pair had plenty to talk about.

“I remember at Christmas I told him about residents wanting dust control for the roads,” she said. “He laughed at me, his entire county was rural.”

Though Boone County is home to the University of Missouri, among other colleges and a strong health care industry, Miller made rural counties a focus of her NACo presidency, particularly the lack of reliable internet and tight budgets.

“My father kept me grounded when I ran for NACo’s executive committee, and tried to help rural counties,” she said.

Even now, she advocates for a share of internet sales tax to go to the county where the goods are being delivered.

“I know that’s not popular everywhere because a lot of places would lose revenue,” she said, harkening back to her inability to hold back on her positions. “But we get the benefit of their tax base and their community suffers. If we allow that change, it will allow rural America to have a tax base again. I can’t think of anything that would stabilize rural America more.”

It would help encourage rural community development, she said, and spur business growth outside of cities.

“Not everybody wants to live in a big city, and they shouldn’t have to just because that’s where the jobs are.”

From her careers in construction and as a restaurant owner, Miller has developed a taste for the details.

“Every time you have a new commission, you figure out your roles, and that was mine. I finish things, I’m a detail-oriented person.”

One of her skills she only recently appreciated was her willingness to defer to others for different projects.

“A lot of times, I’ve given up things I’ve loved but I felt like it’s for the greater good,” she said. “If it is a project someone was really excited about, I was comfortable stepping back and letting their passion take over. I could figure out how to get my input in some other way, but you really have to let people grow into their passion. That way the whole county benefits.”

She plans to work on a family genealogy and contribute to the county historical society and maybe, some time down the line, take the cruise she told County News she dreamed of, back in 2012.

“I’ll miss watching the county progress (from inside) and making the decisions that make it a better place to live,” she said. “I’ll stay involved somehow, just not every day.”

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